The Art of Conversation II - Szewczyk

8/6/2019 The Art of Conversation II - Szewczyk

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Monika Szewczyk

Art ofConversation,

Part II

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn continuing this written monologue aboutconversation, I am becoming aware of the sheerweirdness of thinking in this way aboutsomething that behaves so differently thanwriting Òfor the record.Ó But if, as MauriceBlanchot demonstrates, conversation can bedefined as a series of interruptions Ð perhapsthe most powerful of which being the neutralityof silence Ð then writing, which is a kind of silentspeech, may itself constitute an interruption tothe way conversation is imagined.1

Watching What We SayWhen I think of conversation I increasingly thinkof over hearing. Recall Gene Hackman in FrancisFord CoppolaÕs The Conversation. HackmanÕscharacter Ð Harry Caul Ð is a professionalwiretapper whose obsessive records ofconversations are haunted by the possibility offatal consequences. One job may have cost aman his life; another job, the one underwayduring the film, may prevent another manÕs

death. The film, which won the Palme dÕOr atCannes in May 1974, was a fortuitous echo of theWatergate Scandal that came to a boil in thesummer months of the same year Ð a politicalevent that churned around the over hearing ofconversations, thereby accentuating wiretappingas an invaluable political tool Ð provided that onedoes not get caught. Richard ÒTricky DickÓ Nixonwas the unlucky Republican president who didget caught, and he was nearly impeached forindiscriminately wiretapping the conversationsof his opponents in the Democratic Party during

their convention at the Watergate Hotel inWashington. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, hisSecretary of State, also compulsively recordedtheir own conversations, understanding thatwhat is said seemingly Òoff the recordÓ is often ofthe greatest political consequence. Therecordings of their secret and semi-secretconversations, many of which took placebetween 1971 and 1973, are now availableonline. Just as they hold the potential to revealthe truths of policy and power, so too do theypaint a general picture of a cynical political era

that saw a fundamental transformation in thepopular conception of conversation as not onlysomething that shapes and reflects values Ð ofwit, pleasure and elegance, of time well spent Ðbut also as information, tangible evidence,something to be placed before the Law.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTo be sure, spies and other lucky listenershad overheard conversations for centuries andused them for political gain, but it was only withthe increasingly rampant wiretapping of the ColdWar era that words could be spoken Òfor therecordÓ without the speakersÕ knowledge orwillingness. Hence everything you said could beused against you. And this has come to beg thequestion: How do we watch what we say as aresult? Have we become more cautious, evenparanoid, about how we break a silence, lessable to test our radical ideas in the open Ð all

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The Conversation, film poster.



Ian Wilson Discussion note.



because there is a greater chance of the recordof such conversations coming back to haunt us,even once we have changed our minds? If so, theamount of willfully recorded and also scriptedconversations Ð and their recent proliferation inthe art world Ð becomes particularly curious.Artur ŻmijewskiÕs video for Documenta 12, Oni[They] which synthesized an entire body ofbehavioral research about wordlessconversations among Polish artists of his andearlier generations; Falke PisanoÕs script for ASculpture Turning into a Conversation, performedon occasion with Will Holder; Gerard ByrneÕs re-enactments of printed interviews from pastdecades, such as Homme ̂ Femmes (MichelDebrane), based on Catherine ChaineÕs 1977interview with Sartre about women, or 1984 andBeyond, which restages a speculative volleybetween futurologist writers such as IsaacAsimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, andRobert Heinlein; and Rainer GanahlÕs continuousphotographic documentation of talks and

symposia Ð these examples only scratch thesurface, highlighting the most formalizedinstances, which may not always involvesomething to be heard, but always offer a viewonto conversation.2 But there are alsoconversations that seemingly replace other waysof showing art, examples of which I will come toshortly. All this is to say that, in the realm ofcontemporary art, we do not seem to bewatching what we say in terms of holding back.Rather, we may be increasingly interested inconsidering the aesthetics of people talking

together.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut what to make of the sheer volume ofconversation in art? It may be that, in our hyper-communicative world, any record of a personÕsspeech is just a droplet in an ocean of suchtaped talk. In this kind of Òinfinite conversationÓit might in fact be the volume that counts.3 Is theidea to talk more so as to turn the droplet into aweightier drop, maybe even a Ònew waveÓ? If so,it remains to be seen whether a shared horizon ofsocial change grounds many of the artistic andcuratorial projects that have taken up

conversation as a subject and form of late.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe most convincing arguments regardingthe rise of discursive activity point to itsfoundational relation with a kind of informaleducation that allows for various, often oral andcommunal means of transmitting knowledge andshaping thoughts and values. All this ishappening as education in the humanities andthe arts experiences ever-greater pressures tostandardize its approaches, especially in Europeunder the Bologna Process. In response, therearises a growing need for a heterodoxeducational exchange that allows newinformation, and (especially) the type ofknowledge that cannot even be quantified asinformation, to flow more easily. It has beennoted that this expansion blurs the boundariesbetween educational time and free time, or that

it secretly hopes to erase the category of worktime as an isolated activity. The expansion andcultivation of minds must not be restricted to afew years at school, after which the professionallife follows; rather, these activities constitute the(necessarily constant) Òcare of the selfÓ Ð aconcept from Ancient Greek philosophyresuscitated by Foucault. The more I think aboutit, the more important it becomes to reactivatethe category of the aesthetic in this context as aframe of mind that combines education andpleasure, that does not reduce knowledge toinformation, and, perhaps most problematically,that grounds the faculty of judgment incategories that are difficult to set in stone Ðoften requiring conversations and debates tobring these to life.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊElaborating on the care of the self in alecture on parrhesia, or fearless speech,Foucault underscores the need to step back, notso much to judge oneself, but to practice anÒaesthetics of the self.Ó The distinctions he

draws between aesthetics and judgment arelucid, and help to clarify the spirit in which I amproposing that an Òart of conversationÓ may beaesthetically conceived and practiced:

The truth of the self involves, on the onehand, a set of rational principles which aregrounded in general statements about theworld, human life, necessity, happiness,freedom, and so on, and, on the other hand,practical rules for behaviour. And thequestion which is raised in these different

exercises is oriented towards the followingproblem: Are we familiar enough with theserational principles? Are they sufficientlywell-established in our minds to becomepractical rules for our everyday behaviour?And the problem of memory is at the heartof these techniques, but in the form of anattempt to remind ourselves of what wehave done, thought, or felt so that we mayreactivate our rational principles, thusmaking them as permanent and aseffective as possible in our life. These

exercises are part of what we could call anÒaesthetics of the self.Ó For one does nothave to take up a position or role towardsoneself as that of a judge pronouncing averdict. One can comport oneself towardsoneself in the role of a technician, of acraftsman, of an artist, who from time totime stops working, examines what he isdoing, reminds himself of the rules of hisart, and compares these rules with what hehas achieved thus far.4

FoucaultÕs notion of aesthetics might be appliedto conversation as much as to the self. But in theformer case, it needs to be understooddialectically Ð within a notion of conversationthat is as much the means of constructing anaesthetics as it is the object of this stepping




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Brian Jungen, Talking Sticks,2005.

back. Such a double role complicates criticaldistance. And what is at stake is not someconclusive verdict on what it means to have aconversation, but a continual grasping at whathas been accomplished (what can be seen andsaid) and what else needs to be crafted throughan infinitely interrupted speech. When we stepback for a moment from a conversation, therearises a golden opportunity to catch somethingof the strange knowledge it produces.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIf the catch here is to sense things anewand (as Foucault would have us consider) toperceive the truth of a situation, such perceptionis (ironically) often reserved for the uneducated.Recall the small child in Hans ChristianAndersenÕs The EmperorÕs New Clothes, who isthe only one able to cry out the truth about theemperor. Parading a purely discursive wardrobethrough town, the sovereign is too afraid to admitthat he cannot see the ÒnothingÓ underdiscussion as his finest clothes. In a perfectpremonition of the dematerialized art object,

Andersen describes how the elaboratedescriptions offered by two tricksters, conjuringclothes so fine they are invisible to the riff-raff,gains the support of the kingÕs ministers whodare not contradict their king or, worse still,betray their arbitrary authority by admitting toseeing nothing. They keep up the appearance byelaborating the descriptions in conversation.This conversation upholds the regime. The factthat it takes a child to cry out the simple truththat the emperor has no clothes aligns with amoral habit of sorts: it used to be the aim of art

education to get adults to challenge the statusquo by thinking like children, again. (ConsiderPaul Klee before WWII and COBRA afterwards, orRafie Lavie at the Israeli Pavilion in this yearÕsVenice Biennale). Now the game is different. Inan information economy, the power of discourseto shape the world gives conversation ever morecomplex and concrete potential. And thequestion becomes how to employ conversationas a medium.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd if conversation can be a medium, it isalso increasingly subject to mediation. Thischildlike, unmediated view gives way to anotherfantasy: a neutral or other perspective. Theplurality of conversation Ð made up of so manyinterruptions Ð may forge a complex neutralspace. And, currently, the roaming eye of a film orvideo camera still seems to embody thisneutrality with lenses that have carried themantle of truth since their inception; to a lesserextent, the still photograph or the electronicsound recording could be trusted. Hence the

proliferating documents of conversationalactivity in art may be understood as carving outthat neutral space of conversation Ð an aestheticmeans of stepping back. Put differently, thereseems to be a hope that the increasing numberof intersections of conversation and recordingtechnologies may produce a point of reflectionthat teaches us what we cannot perceive whenwe are in the middle of such a discursive event.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThus immersion is, paradoxically, part andparcel of the stepping back. I do not think,moreover, that the obsession with

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documentation becomes strongest amongstthose driving some radical and absolute socialchange. Rather, it seems most logical for thosewho see themselves as the guardians of a livinghistory, which may not be popular or part of themost widely taught curriculum Ð the most visiblereality Ð but nevertheless exists. This historymay be forged in parallel with official records; i.e.it is interested in continuing and perhaps refiningaspects of the status quo. If there is any hope ofsocial change at stake, another notion ofrevolution haunts it Ð one that assures thecontinuation of a minor history. The flourishing ofa documentary impulse for keeping records thenbecomes competitive. This is less about turningthings upside down than it is about keeping theproverbial wheels turning, ensuring that ÒweÓsurvive.

Quiet as ItÕs KeptÒI canÕt believe weÕre not filming this!Ó whispereda friend of mine recently, during the final (and the

most polyphonic and animated5) of threesymposia entitled ÒThe Rotterdam Dialogues:The Critics, The Curators, The ArtistsÓ heldrecently at the Witte de With, where I work as thehead of publications. The entirety of the threeevents was recorded for sound only Ð a self-conscious wiretapping that neverthelessexcluded numerous exchanges in the corridors,or at the bar, or in the back of the gallery spacesthat were converted into stages for panels anddialogues. These offstage sites may have beenwhere the ÒrealÓ conversations took place.

Certainly for me, this friendÕs whisperedcomment was crucial and will likely filter into theofficial talk about how Witte de With will shape abook from these comings together that cannotbe fully re-presented. Granted, it would havetaken a Cold War mentality to record all of thepertinent exchanges in full. For now, it is up tothe people who attended the symposia to allowtheir most valuable conversations to continue todo their work after the event.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn light of this work of witnessing, I wonder what

would have happened had we insisted on cuttingall electronic recording devices and committedourselves more consciously to the role of livingarchives? I have also wondered for some timeabout what is being kept silent by the presenceof cameras at numerous discursive events that Ihave attended or helped organize recently. Wouldsomething different be shared were there nocameras rolling, were the sound recorders turnedoff? In thinking this, I am inspired by the exampleof an artist like Ian Wilson who, over the courseof the past forty-one years, has organizedspecific, meticulously framed discussions, whichalways take place in camera, but withoutcameras or other recording devices that couldtransmit the proceedings to those who did notattend.6 The only thing that remains, if the workis collected, is a certificate stating that a

discussion has taken place (and when andwhere). This certificate is only produced if thework is bought, not if it is presented withoutpurchase, as has been the case on occasion. Thegesture of generating a certificate thusintersects specifically and somewhatparadoxically with the money economy: on theone hand, there is the implication that moneycannot buy the real heart of the work, theexperience of the discussion which could bemade available, albeit at a remove, were an indexcreated; on the other hand, the commodificationof a discussion does ensure that a paper recordof its having taken place exists for posterity. Adiscussion is only visible if it involves theexchange of currency. People who come acrosssuch a record forty years after the event willwonder Ð I certainly did Ð what precisely wassaid when this discussion took place in New Yorkin 1968? The administrative blankness of thesmall typed notes holds a great, almostconspiratorial promise. Adding to this is the

artistÕs conduct: Wilson never divulges thedetails of the discussions he organizes; heprefers to talk about the structure and the largerframes of the project. He honors a shared secretthat only those present can fully enjoy andremember.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊHaving only ever been outside an Ian Wilsondiscussion, and as someone who encounteredfirst a certificate and then sought out the artisthimself, I wonder about entering this structure.Would my attention Ð especially my sight andhearing Ð be more acute at such an event due to

its elaborate frames and the lack of a camera? OrÐ without the distractions of snapping pictures,the worry that some recording device is out ofbatteries, or the carelessness that comes fromknowing that you can come back to what is saidvia a recording Ð would I forget aboutremembering and be fully present at the eventonce and for all?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊRecently, I tried to test these questions inthe course of a public conversation that I wasinvited to at the Western Front in Vancouver.Jonah Lundh and Candice Hopkins had asked me

to elaborate upon my interest in thinking throughwhat it might mean to consider conversation asan art today; hence the occasion had somethingof the mise en abyme about it.7 The audience wasmade up largely of friends, so it seemedespecially necessary to make things a littleceremonial, a little strange. I borrowed a TalkingStick made by Brian Jungen from a friend whohad been given this work Ð one of severalbaseball bats that Jungen had had router-carvedwith archly ironic slogans alluding to thesimultaneous embrace and disempowerment ofFirst Nations cultures in Canada.8 Jungen oftenÒmisusesÓ sports equipment in his art, and I havealways fantasized about misusing this particularwork of his in turn; that is to say, I wanted to takethe art object, which is usually presented with aÒDo Not TouchÓ sign, and simply use it. In this




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Antoine Watteau, Le P•lerinage ̂ lÕ”le de Cith•re [The Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera], 1717.



Antoine Watteau, LÕEnseigne de Gersaint [GersaintÕs Sign], 1720-1721.

case, misusing it meant to use it literally . In thecourse of our public discussion, we ended uppassing the carved baseball bat around, goingthrough the motions of an idea of oral culturethat we could hardly access, the systematicpersecution of such practices in Canada havingbroken much of the continuity that ensures thelife and survival of storytelling. Nonetheless, thisvery physical thing in the midst of thedematerialized space of conversation didsomehow render material the movement of ideasaround the room, even as it all remained rathertheatrical, especially since everything was wiredfor sound, and a camera looked me right in theeye as I sat at the head of the room.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis tension between the logic of oralculture and the logic of recording gatherings andconversations seemed to be working against thespirit of what I had intended, and at some point Iinsisted on switching off the camera and thesound recorder that had been rigged up in theroom. In my mind, and some who were there may

disagree, the moment the recording devices wereunplugged, another kind of electricity also fadedaway. The performative flair of many peopleÕsutterances dissipated and there was a lot ofstraight talk, mostly about the navetŽ of mygesture. Judy Radul Ð an artist and onetime poetwho performed live at the Western Front and whohas shifted her focus to experiments with theroles cameras play, especially in defining spaceas mechanisms of law and sovereignty Ð wasmost adamant in reminding me that, were it notfor the people who bothered to turn on the

cameras and other recording devices in the very

room where we sat, much of what has beencalled the ÒwhisperedÓ history of art inVancouver would have been lost. This is a historyof media experimentation, persona formation,poetry, music, and other variants of the livingarts that have received much less historicalattention than what is known internationally asthe ÒVancouver School of Photography.Ó9 Shealso pointed out that cameras have the uncannyability to capture the non-verbal aspects ofconversation, especially the incredible power ofÐ and here she stopped speaking for whatseemed like eternity, though it was probably lessthen a minute Ð silence. The next day, Hopkinsand I discussed how RadulÕs long silence hadbrought the electricity back into the room andhow we regretted not capturing it on camera.This is partly why I am writing about it, but only acamera could have fully represented this strangeinterruption. Subsequently, my ears have sincebeen more attuned to such silences.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd recently (midway through writing this

text, in fact), I had an encounter with a self-declared silence in the form of a conversation Ð akind of non-work (or maybe a meta-work?) Ð inthe midst of an exhibition by Oskar Dawicki atRaster in Warsaw.10 This took the form of atyped-out text, simply pinned on the doorsdividing the two exhibition spaces of the prewarWarsaw apartment-turned-gallery. It is entitledÒI have never made a work about the Holocaust,Óand in it Łukasz Gorczyca Ð who founded RasterÐ questions Dawicki about this pronouncementand another conversation the artist had with

Zbigniew Libera. We read about LiberaÕs

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concerns regarding the reductive approaches tothe subject.11 Artist and curator further discussfeeling called upon to address the Holocaust,particularly in Poland, and the simultaneousimpossibility of creating something thatpreserves an artworkÕs integrity Ð that is, itsautonomy Ð in relation to this subject.12 Hereconversation performs a limit by paradoxicallyspeaking a type of silence. Adorno andWittgenstein haunt the text, especially AdornoÕsassertion that there can be no poetry afterAuschwitz. But IÕm interested in how thisimpossibility bears on the other, more properlyautonomous works in the exhibition, which grantthe conversation the status of something on theedge of art making Ð something that is donewhen making work is impossible.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis brings me to another conversation Iwould like to discuss Ð and I realize I amemploying a rather loose definition of the termÒconversation,Ó allowing it to hold togethervarious forms of discourse; as may be clear by

now, in each case my defining criteria involveinterruptions by means of silence and a shakyclaim to the status of art. The conversation inquestion is in fact twice removed from (what IÕlldare to call) Òa natural stateÓ: not only is it astaged trial (and therefore another kind of meta-conversation), but it is also a record of thisstaged event Ð a very purposeful document thatused several cameras, and was stronglymanipulated in its editing into a film.13 We mightsay that art has been made of a conversation,which was a kind of performance art in the first

place. Yet this artfulness is particular in that thefilm never really asserted itself as gallery art, butwas rather distributed on the festival circuit andleft open to various classifications.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI am thinking here of Hila PelegÕs A Crime

Against Art, a film which is based on aneponymous mock trial staged at the 2007 ARCOArt Fair in Madrid. The charge: collusion with thebourgeoisie. Here again, silence speaks volumesabout a very current taboo, but one that has beenwith us for centuries. There is a lot to say abouthow this film captures a particular network

within the art world, and how it articulatespositions, constructs contradictions, and craftsa subtle comedy. But I will concentrate on onedecisive detail of the cross-examination. Askeddirectly whether he considers himself to be amember of the bourgeoisie, the defendantblankly stares just shy of the cameraÕs deadcenter and remains silent for a moment worthy ofa Harold Pinter play.14 At this point, it is difficultto tell what he is thinking, but this interruption inthe communicative exchange lets viewersconsider the question in some detail. And(perhaps depending on whether youÕve read yourBlanchot or not) you might say that this isprecisely where the real conversation begins. Bythe time the answer yes is uttered Ð an effectiveadmission of ÒguiltÓ Ð the binary code of yes/nohas been filled with the neutrality of saying

nothing. The cinematically amplified silencerefreshes the question of class at a time whenthe charge that artists are affecting bourgeoisnorms Ð gentrifying neighborhoods, making moremoney than is good for them, and so on Ð isbecoming something of a staple (a self-congratulatory one, as well) in art-relateddiscourse. Here we get to the neutral ground ofnon-judgment that keeps a question alive.

Nothing Gold Can StayThe moral of the story is thus temporary andtentative: maybe we need to think more aboutwhat class is, as well as which one we (want to)belong to. Considering that we are only ÒweÓbecause we share values, and therefore cancontinue to create things that will prove valuablefor us to exchange, it would be interesting to askto what extent this creation and exchange ofvalue is understood as a situation in which thesole or most important currency is money. Inthinking this, readers might keep in the back of

their minds a couple of conversations painted (soas to be watched, but not heard?) by AntoineWatteau during a time of growing confusionsurrounding the ruling classes: Le P•lerinage ˆlÕ”le de Cith•re [The Pilgrimage to the Island ofCythera] from 1717 and LÕEnseigne de Gersaint[GersaintÕs Sign] from 1720Ð1721, both of whichhang today in the Schloss Charlottenburg inBerlin. In thinking further through the currency ofconversation, it seems crucial to ask what valuesare both created and traded in the course ofcontemporary conversations. What interruptions

are admitted and which ones are yet to beregistered?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊA caveat (rich in irony): IÕm writing this on atrain from Warsaw to Berlin, and IÕve just beeninterrupted by a very polite Polish man whodistributes language books abroad and ispassionate about collecting coins and about thetreatment of ÒourÓ people in Germany Ð Austriaand Switzerland are better, he assures me, eventhough everyone speaks German there too. ÒAslong as a German is your boss, he or she will benice to you. If itÕs the opposite, well . . .Ó This is

irritating Ð I donÕt want to think about collectiblecoins but about a wholly different kind ofcurrency. And IÕm weary of his notion of the Òwe.ÓI thought of telling him that he is paranoid andthat we all need to think less about nations andmore about cities, better still about civitas. ButIÕve decided to interrupt our conversation withmy silence. IÕm fully focused on my screen now,though I continue to think: whose interruptionwould I value at this moment? Here comes theGerman conductor Ð I hope sheÕs nice so myneighbor has no base on which to build hisbiases!ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe cinematic silence of one accused ofcollusion with the bourgeoisie may be the basefor thinking about how conversation haseverything to do with the construction of socialclass Ð especially one that is still difficult to




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name. I say ÒclassÓ rather than ÒcommunityÓbecause the word resonates with key allusions,and it is also in danger of losing some of its

punctum.15 The question of whether a class isbeing constructed by virtue of the co-presence ofcertain people at certain conversations and notothers is perhaps only interesting if that notionof class escapes easy classification. Rather thanadvocating a return to Marxist dogma, I amthinking of something that hovers somewherebetween two more particular senses of the term.One is employed by Diedrich Diederichsen at theend of his essay On (Surplus) Value in Art:

Previously, the bourgeoisie was a stable,cultural class that had its place at thecenter of cultural production, which itregulated by means of a mixture of free-market attitudes and subsidies, staging itsown expression as both a ruling class and alife force that stood in need of legitimation.The bourgeoisie is now fragmenting into

various anonymous economic profiteerswho no longer constitute a single, culturalentity. For most economic processes, stateand national cultural formations are nolonger as crucial for the realization ofeconomic interests as they were previously.As a result, the bourgeoisie, as a class thatonce fused political, economic, and culturalpower, is becoming less visible. Instead, themost basic economic factors are becomingautonomous. Once these factors becomeautonomous, the obligation towards

cultural values that even the worst forms ofthe culture industry kept as standards,disappears.16

The notion of class cannot be understoodprimarily in economic terms, Diederichsenreminds us, especially when we think of theÒruling classÓ and even if we think that moneyrules the world these days. Once money becomesthe only currency that people trade in, the rulingclass disappears. Conversely, it might be saidthat members of a specific class develop

mechanisms for appearing to each other, and ata certain moment this can be called a sharedaesthetics or a shared worldview. But we mightask: does watching what we say mark thisprocess in its formation? And this brings up theother, more literal sense of class: namely, peoplewho learn things together. If emphasis is placedon coming together to converse and to tradevaluable information, what can then be seen inthe process of many such activities is theconstruction of a style of living and a set ofvalues that can only be exchanged by those whonot only have read the same books, but who arealso able to embody their knowledge and itsmost interesting limits.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe idea of knowledge as something thatonly a good conversation can transmit isinherited in part from the aristocracy, a class

that did not distinguish between art and life, ornot as much as we do. Interestingly, aristocratsonly began to obsess about the subtleties ofconversation as they grew closer to losing theirclaims to a divine right to rule. In WatteauÕsPainted Conversations, Mary Vidal writes aboutaristocratic notions of conversation inseventeenth- and eighteenth-century France asa Òdisguised, diluted, non-bourgeois type ofeducation.Ó17 Sound familiar? Accused of aninstrumental approach to all knowledge, thebourgeoisie was feared for promoting a trade ininformation that could beinstitutionally/democratically taught, which forthe aristocrats amounted to an unnaturalknowledge. Vidal argues that what Watteaudepicts in his paintings is never the content ofthe conversations as something distinct fromtheir form Ð never the pointed, instructionalgestures of a Gainsborough painting thatexaggerate things so as to render them readable,even to the (morally) unschooled. Rather, their

secret knowledge is always embedded Ð a set ofvalues (elegance, harmony with nature) isexpressed in paintings that espouse those veryvalues and posit conversation as an art of living.Vidal makes a strong case for considering theÒnaturalnessÓ of the corseted aristocrats thatWatteau painted in terms of being ÒGod-givenÓand full of grace Ð something that might escapea contemporary (secular) eye which looks fornaturalness in wildness or the absence oftechnology. The paintings are strange to us,perhaps because they do not reflect our values,

but they are also somewhat unheimlich insofaras they point to the contemporary representationof conversation as the potential for creating a setof values, a common currency, a kind of network.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThere is great interest nowadays inrepresenting networks. The recent disclosure bythe makers of Facebook that they will not fullydelete records of their users Ð even those whochoose to deactivate their accounts Ðunderscores a somewhat paranoid logic thatpotentially preys on friendship as a mapping ofconsumers that lead to more consumers. It is

with this in the back of my mind that I look atboth of WatteauÕs aforementioned paintings. Theshop sign in the form of a painting was made forthe art dealer Edme-Fran•ois Gersaint andshows people evaluating and appreciating otherpaintings. The mass and mobility of thesepictures Ð which are no longer attached to castleor church walls (as was customary for majorcommissions until about the 15th century), butcan be packed in a crate (as shown on the left)and shipped to hang in anyoneÕs home Ð are asource of titillation. This early picture of the artmarket makes a point of exhibiting conversationas a basis of the market transaction. In someways, conversation is the real value beingexchanged; or it might be said that conversationsarise in the places where value must benegotiated.




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ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSure, I am reading into the picture Ðspeculating, projecting, appreciating it in a waythat might not be appreciated by scholars Ð but Ido see a speculative sense of value in LÕEnseignede Gersaint that may account for the greatersense of tension in this image Ð greater eventhan is perceptible in WatteauÕs earlier depictionof a pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera, theludicrously lovely dwelling place of Aphrodite.18

If the earlier painting is gratuitously graceful Ð tomy eyes at least Ð the heavenly element(embodied by the putti in the background of LeP•lerinage ˆ lÕ”le de Cith•re) is gone from theshop sign (and perhaps this is the reason for themidsummer melancholia of the embarkation). IÕlleven play a little faster and looser with arthistory still, and posit that perhaps this gracehas been replaced by another ÒotherÓ in the veryfront of the picture Ð a dog that is quite obviouslynot taking part in the conversations at GersaintÕsshop. Since ÒdogÓ only spells ÒgodÓ backwards inEnglish, it is unlikely that Watteau was thinking

in the same vein Ð seeing divinity in an animaland thus a true ÒotherÓ to converse with Ð buteven in French they say ÒLe bon Dieu est dans ledŽtail,Ó and this one needs some attention.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIÕve always been told that dogs in paintingsare code for some abstract notion of Òloyalty,Óbut this oneÕs not very convincing. If anything, hedenaturalizes the entire scene. And if the dogrefuses to play his allegorical part, his presenceon the edge of the frame may be pointing to thefact that the pictures are framed, movable, andthus of continually reframed value. Looking at

that oddly placed dog in WatteauÕs paintedconversation, I wonder how we fit into thispicture. On a couple of occasions, I have heardMartha Rosler confront her interlocutors in apublic forum with the problem of forgettingabout bohemia. For her, the staginess ofconversations nowadays has evacuated some ofthe fun and much of the real political force fromwhat she experienced when people gatheredtogether in the sixties and seventies.19 But thereal problem seems to be a kind of waning of aparticular class-consciousness Ð a sense of

common values involving a self-imposed povertyfor the sake of other riches. Maybe WatteauÕs dogis a budding bohemian, or better still Diogenes,the Òdog philosopherÓ who, when asked byAlexander the Great if the admiring Omnipotentcould grant him any wish, any riches, simplyrequested that the emperor get out of his sun.The question of class might become moreinteresting if we begin to ask ourselves whetherit is not just bohemia, but the middle class, thatis being eclipsed Ð and with what. The other(increasingly urgent) question of what we arecurrently projecting onto animals will have towait for another time, another conversation.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ

Monika Szewczyk is a writer and editor based in Berlinand in Rotterdam, where she is the head ofpublications at Witte de With, Center for

Contemporary Art, and a tutor at the Piet ZwartInstitute. She also acts as contributing editor of A Prior

magazine in Ghent.




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1Part I of this ongoing essay,published in e-flux journal #3,worked through MauriceBlanchotÕs notion ofconversation developed in hispolyphonous book The InfiniteConversation, ed. and trans.Susan Hanson (Minneapolis andLondon: University of MinnesotaPress, 1993). It focusesparticularly on BlanchotÕs idea ofconversation as interruptedthought and speech; and ongenuine interruption as coming

from autrui, or Òthe other.ÓBlanchotÕs notion of autrui,which is somewhat enigmaticand radically open, positssilence as a key form ofinterruption and a space ofneutrality. Thus conversationalinterlocutors that greet us withsilence Ð such as God, animals,and finally a rock (as these arefound in certain films, artworks,and poetry) Ð featuredprominently in the text. Furtherfollowing BlanchotÕs notion thattrue conversation is shaped bythe profound silence of theother, which is alwaysunderstood beyond binaryopposition, Part I posed thequestion of whether whatcurrently passes forconversation is really that. Thequestion may never be resolved,but is likely to spur thecontinuation of this multi-partessay infinitely, without end or aclear horizon.

2Thanks to Michał Woliński for noting ŻmijewskiÕs legacyrecently.

3Though this is not to say thatthis is what Blanchot meant withthe title of his eponymous book!

4See Michel Foucault, FearlessSpeech (Los Angeles:Semiotext(e), 2001), 165Ð166.

5As audience participationmatched the engagement of theinvited speakers.

6I have never attended one ofWilsonÕs discussions so cannotelaborate on their content, butwhat I know from meeting theartist is that the crafting of adiscussion is of greatimportance, and that the

absence of all recording devicesmakes for an atmosphere thatputs a much greater emphasison participation and the role ofeach participant as a witness toan event. The task of memorycould here be taken as primary.Or, given the inability toremember perfectly, one couldcompletely give oneself over toparticipation and let oneselfthen be the evidence of whattook place by virtue of anytransformation of the person.

7Jonah Lundh is a freelancecurator developing a program ofconversations for this artist-run

center, and Candice Hopkins isthe curator of exhibitions there.

8As can be seen in thephotograph, JungenÕs TalkingSticks are usually displayed toemphasize their relation to the

sports equipment they are madefrom Ð baseball bats. But in thecontext of his work, which oftentakes up questions of FirstNations identity and itscommercialization in NorthAmerican sports culture, theyare often seen to echo totempoles (at the size they might bemade for the tourist industry).Having worked with Jungen atthe time he developed thesecarvings, I do recall discussionsof their formal relation to thekind of carved staffs, which are

often decorated with FirstNations motifs and paraded atofficial functions by theLieutenant Governor of theprovince of British Columbia (theQueenÕs representative) or thepresidents of the universities inVancouver. Each time, suchobjects slyly enact a kind oftransfer of sovereignty from theFirst Nations, which never tookplace legally and continues to bea point of debate.

9See Whispered Art History:Twenty Years at the WesternFront, ed. Keith Wallace(Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press,2002).

10What you are reading now wasadded towards the end of writingthis text, but it seemed right tointerrupt myself in this context.

11Recall LiberaÕs highlycontroversial LEGOConcentration Camp (1996),which was recently purchasedby the Jewish Museum in NewYork.

12This is not the first instance in

which Dawicki has usedconversation as a form of meta-art to stress impossibility orrefusal. In his earlier work withthe members of the artistsÕÒsupergroupÓ Azorro (supergroupin the sense that each artist alsohas an independent practice),entitled Everything has beendone (2003), a conversationexpresses the impossibility ofmaking certain works ofconceptual art quite simplybecause they have already beenconceived. But in the case of thecurrent work about the difficultyof addressing the Holocaust inart, the tone is very different.The conversation is situated

amidst works that deal muchmore symbolically with thesearch for knowledge, failure,death, and palliatives, using avariety of neo-conceptualpictorial media (and one soft-sculpture consisting of theartistÕs clothes, tied together toform an escape line out thewindow of the gallery). Ironically,this conversation aboutstrategic silence was totallymissed by a reviewer in GazetaWyborcza, who took time tomention every other work in theexhibition. See Dorota Jarecka,ÒPrzegrywamy do KońcaÓ GazetaWyborcza, May 28, 2009, 14.

13The structural undercurrents ofconversation in courtproceedings and theconstruction of judgments inparticular are explored in arecent single-channel videowork by Judy Radul: a seemingly

natural conversation that turnsout to be completelyconstructed on the basis of thethree elements announced in itstitle: Question, Answer,

Judgment (2008).

14Those who have seen the filmmay know that the defendanthappens to be one of the editorsof this journal, Anton Vidokle.And I am as aware that my textmay be read as an act ofcollusion (with those already

accused of collusion!) as I aminterested in forging a way tospeak from within suchconditions of complicity. Ineschewing the fiction of criticaldistance, it might be possible tothink through more complexnotions of thinking critically, notonly about dead or distantfigures, but also about thepeople we tend to haveconversations with and the veryconditions we are immersed in.

15Interestingly, in a recent reviewof VidokleÕs activities by TaranehFazeli in the Summer 2009 issueof Artforum titled ÒClassConsciousness,Ó the focus is notawareness of social class Ðrather the title alludes to theeducational activities of e-flux,which are discussed in terms ofsocial consciousness, but not interms of class.

16Diedrich Diederichsen, ÒOn(Surplus) Value in Art,Ó ed.Nicolaus Schafhausen, CarolineSchneider, and MonikaSzewczyk (Rotterdam andBerlin: Witte de With Publishersand Sternberg Press, 2008), 48.

17

Mary Vidal, WatteauÕs PaintedConversations: Art, Literatureand Talk in Seventeenth andEighteenth-Century France (NewHaven and London: YaleUniversity Press, 1992), 95.Thanks to S¿ren Andreasen forrecommending this fascinatingbook.

18Not that the latter is void oftension. In fact there is somedebate about whether thearistocrats are already on theisland and finding it difficult toleave, or whether they are aboutto embark. Regardless ofwhether the good trip is deferred

or coming to an end, theconversationalists are in limbo.

19One was ÒThe New YorkConversations,Ó in June 2008 inthe new e-flux space; anotherwas at the above-mentionedÒRotterdam Dialogues: TheArtistsÓ at Witte de With, whereRosler was a keynote speaker.




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The Art of Conversation II - Szewczyk